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Point me toward a CEO who's more intimately involved with their company's products than Jobs.

jarek 16y ago
He tells people what to build. He's very good at it, but he doesn't build things himself. Vision is cheap; negative taste [1][2] is easy; it's the implementation that counts. I have no problem valuing the industrial engineers who figured out how to make the iPad 13 mm thick more than Jobs who decided it would be 13 mm thick. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste [2] http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/ http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/
- defen 16y ago
  Yes, but who other than Jobs has the authoritas to convince those engineers to make that 13mm a reality?
  - jarek 16y ago
    Unless I am missing a reference in "authoritas", anyone who can fire those engineers.
    - jarek 16y ago
      Right. Seriously -- what did you mean by "authoritas"? Normally, employees, including engineers, do what you tell them to do. Knowing what is possible and borderline possible and when is also an important part of Jobs's skill set, but still is nowhere near actually doing it in my eyes.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Perhaps there's a distinction to be made between building the individual components and building 'the product'. Obviously, Jobs doesn't do the former, certainly not by hand. But he's very much involved in product development throughout the entire design cycle: initial vision, product definition, decisions about integration with other services, constant iteration of software and hardware (this is where he's said to be very hands on, constantly using the product and giving direction), final spec/price points, packaging, and marketing. This creation of a complete product is what has made Apple so successful in the last decade and seems to me to clearly be the 'building' of a product. Anyway, if vision and negative taste are cheap and easy, why don't more tech companies seem to have them? It doesn't at all seem to me that the trait that makes Apple stand out is that they have engineers that are head and shoulders above the rest of the industry. Not at all. Apple's engineers are good, but hardly unique in their ability to make 13mm thick tablet computers. It's that they have taste and vision and they execute on top of them.
jpark 16y ago
I would say any startup CEO worth their salt. and most cases, esp on HN, they're actually involved in building it, not just telling people that it must be built.

jarek 16y ago

He tells people what to build. He's very good at it, but he doesn't build things himself. Vision is cheap; negative taste [1][2] is easy; it's the implementation that counts. I have no problem valuing the industrial engineers who figured out how to make the iPad 13 mm thick more than Jobs who decided it would be 13 mm thick. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/2taste [2] http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/ http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/

defen 16y ago
Yes, but who other than Jobs has the authoritas to convince those engineers to make that 13mm a reality?
- jarek 16y ago
  Unless I am missing a reference in "authoritas", anyone who can fire those engineers.
  - jarek 16y ago
    Right. Seriously -- what did you mean by "authoritas"? Normally, employees, including engineers, do what you tell them to do. Knowing what is possible and borderline possible and when is also an important part of Jobs's skill set, but still is nowhere near actually doing it in my eyes.
glhaynes 16y ago
Perhaps there's a distinction to be made between building the individual components and building 'the product'. Obviously, Jobs doesn't do the former, certainly not by hand. But he's very much involved in product development throughout the entire design cycle: initial vision, product definition, decisions about integration with other services, constant iteration of software and hardware (this is where he's said to be very hands on, constantly using the product and giving direction), final spec/price points, packaging, and marketing. This creation of a complete product is what has made Apple so successful in the last decade and seems to me to clearly be the 'building' of a product. Anyway, if vision and negative taste are cheap and easy, why don't more tech companies seem to have them? It doesn't at all seem to me that the trait that makes Apple stand out is that they have engineers that are head and shoulders above the rest of the industry. Not at all. Apple's engineers are good, but hardly unique in their ability to make 13mm thick tablet computers. It's that they have taste and vision and they execute on top of them.

jpark 16y ago

I would say any startup CEO worth their salt. and most cases, esp on HN, they're actually involved in building it, not just telling people that it must be built.